In an interesting new study, researchers have revealed that several ancient volcanic eruptions actually helped the dinosaurs to dominate the planet and thrive for so many millions of years. The volcanic eruptions started happening about 230 million years ago which caused significant changes to the environment and ecology such as Earth’s carbon cycle as well as the climate.

Researchers came to this conclusion by studying sediment and fossil plant records that came from a lake in the Jiyuan Basin in the northern part of China. They noticed that there was more humidity and higher temperatures that were caused by extreme volcanism and climatic shifts. These environmental changes included the CPE’s (Late Triassic Carnian Pluvial Episode) “mega monsoon” climate around 234 to 232 million years ago. When these changes occurred, massive amounts of marine creatures were wiped out, conifer trees increased in numbers, and dinosaurs became dominant.

Jason Hilton, who is a professor of paleobotany and paleoenvironments at the University of Birmingham in Britain and a co-author of the study, went into further details, “Within the space of two million years the world’s animal and plant life underwent major changes including selective extinctions in the marine realm and diversification of plant and animal groups on land,” adding, “These events coincide with a remarkable interval of intense rainfall known as the Carnian Pluvial Episode.”

As a matter of fact, the researchers separated the shift that lasted two million years into four episodes that were each caused by a volcanic pulse. These events allowed more carbon to be released into our atmosphere which ended up making our planet warmer and caused large amounts of rain to fall.

Dr. Sarah Greene, who is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham as well as being another co-author of the study, weighed in by noting, “Our results show that large volcanic eruptions can occur in multiple, discrete pulses – demonstrating their powerful ability to alter the global carbon cycle, cause climate and hydrological disruption and drive evolutionary processes.”

While these climatic shifts gave rise to the dinosaurs, experts still aren’t clear as to the reasoning behind it as explained by Emma Dunne who is a paleobiologist at the University of Birmingham but was not involved in the study, “This relatively long period of volcanic activity and environmental change would have had considerable consequences for animals on land.” “At this time, the dinosaurs had just begun to diversify, and it’s likely that without this event, they would never have reached their ecological dominance we see over the next 150 million years.”

Well, at least the dinosaurs benefited from the numerous volcanic eruptions that took place millions of years ago – until the asteroid wiped them out 66 million years ago.

The study was published in the journal PNAS where it can be read in full.

For many recent nighttime observers in North America and Europe, strange glowing lights may have made an appearance in the evening skies.

Although they may have looked otherworldly in appearance, these phenomena were of the celestial variety, rather than indications of extraterrestrial visitation.

On Monday, a powerful geomagnetic storm was logged by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who predicted that resulting displays of the aurora borealis could have been visible as far south as New York, Wisconsin, and Washington.

Geomagnetic storms occur when Earth’s sun ejects energy in the form of highly charged particles that strike the magnetic field that encircles our planet. As the particles collide with our planet’s magnetic shielding, it creates the famous dancing auroral displays, which under the right conditions can be very colorful and vivid.

NOAA features an online aurora forecast that provides real-time updates on when and where auroral appearances will be visible to nighttime viewers in the northern hemisphere. Similarly, viewers further south may occasionally be able to spot the aurora australis, the southern counterpart to the aurora borealis, which can be seen from various locales in the southern hemisphere.

However, the aurora borealis probably wasn’t the only thing causing the appearances of eerie lights in the night sky over parts of North America this week.

Many skywatchers in North Carolina were also made privy to a light show in recent days as a mysterious object was seen streaking through the sky shortly after 7:30 PM. Was it a UFO?

Probably not in this case, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS), who received videos of the nighttime intruder from North Carolinians who managed to film it, and said the object was a bright fireball.

The AMS says it was one of a handful of similar fireball sightings that occurred across North America last Friday night.

The meteor apparently cut through the atmosphere at a height of around 48 miles as it entered above Jacksonville, North Carolina. Observers estimate that it traveled at speeds nearing 32,000 miles per hour as it burned along.

According to its outlook for the dates encompassing when the sighting occurred, the AMS said that the estimated total hourly meteor rate for observers had been near 2 for observers in northern latitudes, and 1 as seen from tropical southern locations.

“The actual rates will also depend on factors such as personal light and motion perception, local weather conditions, alertness, and experience in watching meteor activity,” the AMS outlook read, adding that “Rates are reduced due to moonlight during this period,” and that “observers viewing from urban areas will see less activity as only the brighter meteors will be visible from such locations.”

Like auroras, the dynamics of meteors are well understood, although there have been a variety of anomalous occurrences associated with each of these phenomena, namely involving unusual sounds associated with the passage of bright fireballs through the sky. These noises that often accompany meteors have long baffled astronomers, because they cannot easily be reconciled as being produced by the objects burning through the sky since observers often report them simultaneously, as opposed to several seconds (or even minutes) later, allowing time for such sounds to travel.

While some phenomena associated with meteors does obviously remain mysterious, recent sightings of unusual things in the night sky over the Northern Hemisphere do seem to have a reasonable explanation, this time.

Encounters with mysterious, glowing balls of light – ones that have the mystifying ability to change into the forms of strange and savage creatures – have been reported on more than a few occasions in Texas. A classic example is the large body of data that surrounds a certain huge area of forest in Texas. As someone who is proud to call the Dallas-Fort Worth area my home, I am all too well aware that many people think and assume that Texas is just one big desert. In reality, however, that’s far from the case. Yes, West Texas is extremely flat and filled with almost endless fields of cotton. And, it’s also true that South Texas has its fair share of harsh and scalding landscapes. However, Central, North, and East Texas are very different: they are dominated by thick forestland that extends for miles and miles…and miles. Indeed, a 2011 Forest Inventory and Analysis report prepared by the Texas Forest Service revealed that Texas’ woods ran to 62.4 million acres, and which cover almost forty percent of the state. And it’s to one particular area of dense woodland that we have to turn our attention to. Its name: the Big Thicket.

(Nick Redfern)

Located in the Piney Woods area of East Texas, the Big Thicket has a most apt moniker: it is a huge, 83,000-acre area of woodland. “Dense” barely begins to describe the massive, forested environment, which is home to numerous wild animals, including alligators and bobcats – as well as to other creatures of a very odd kind, as we’ll soon see. Running through the heart of the Big Thicket is a long, thin, and incredibly sandy old road called Bragg Road. That’s not what the locals call it, though. To them, it is known as Ghost Light Road. Or, just Ghost Road. There is a very good reason for this: for at least three centuries, people have reported seeing weird, small balls of light flitting through the trees late at night. But, we’re not talking about anything quite as down to earth as fireflies. These particular lights vary in size from – approximately – a tennis ball to a beach ball. They also exhibit evidence of intelligence: witnesses describe the lights approaching them, even circling them, in what is occasionally perceived as a playful fashion. Such is the interest that the lights provoke in the people that live there, and in visitors too, a historical marker has been erected at the start of Bragg Road and which details the strange story of the lights.

(Nick Redfern) Nick Redfern and the late Rob Riggs

The late Rob Riggs was a well-known figure in the Bigfoot research field and someone who spent a significant portion of his life living in the Big Thicket area. Riggs collected numerous reports of the mysterious ghost lights, dating back to the 1800s. But, Riggs did far more than that: he also catalogued an astonishing number of reports of what seemed to be Bigfoot and large, black leopards. I say “seemed to be” for a very good reason. While most people who have reported seeing large black cats, and who have had hairy wild-man type encounters in the Big Thicket, the vast majority are content to conclude they encountered animals of the type that very few ever get to encounter. But, not all of them. A small body of individuals have sworn that the large cats and the hairy humanoids – when spotted by the astonished and sometimes terrified onlookers – vanished before their eyes. We’re not talking about them making hasty getaways into the woods. Rather, we are talking about the “animals” – in an instant – changing form from big cat and Bigfoot to a small, brightly-lit globe of light. The ghost lights that have been staple parts of the area for centuries, of course.

Just a few days ago, I was chatting on radio about the notorious “Philadelphia Experiment” of 1943. Or, rather, the alleged experiment. There’s no doubt at all that when it comes to the issues of control and conspiracy, just about the biggest doozy of all is that which revolves around what is known as the Montauk Project. It’s a complicated saga which is filled with tales of mind-control, time-travel, government cover-ups, secret experiments, and much more. And it’s all focused around a certain facility located on Long Island, New York. It’s a story that has its origins in the 1940s and an incredible series of classified programs run by the U.S. Navy, but which didn’t start to surface publicly until the 1950s. It was in 1955 that a highly controversial book on flying saucers was published. The author was Morris Ketchum Jessup, and the title of his book was The Case for the UFO. It was a book which, for the most part, highlighted two particular issues: (a) how gravity could be harnessed and used as an energy; and (b) the source of power of the mysterious flying saucers that people were seeing in the skies above. It wasn’t long after the book was published that Jessup was contacted by a man who wrote Jessup a number of letters that detailed something astounding. The man was one Carlos Allende, a resident of Pennsylvania.

Allende’s letters were as long as they were rambling and almost ranting, but Jessup found them oddly addictive. Allende provided Jessup what he – Allende – claimed were top secret snippets of a story that revolved another nothing less than invisibility – of the type achieved, in fictional formats, at least, in the likes of The Invisible Man movie of 1933, starring Claude Rains. It wasn’t just invisibility that Allende had on his mind: it was teleportation, too, and of the kind which went drastically wrong for Jeff Goldblum’s character, Seth Brundle, in 1986’s The Fly. Jessup read the letters with varying degrees of amazement, worry, fear and incredulity. That’s hardly surprising, given the nature of the alleged events. So Allende’s tale went, it was at the Philadelphia Naval Yard, in October 1943, when the U.S. Navy reportedly managed to bring both teleportation and invisibility into the real world.

(U.S. Navy) USS Eldridge

According to Allende, the ship in question – the DE 173 USS Eldridge – vanished from Philadelphia and then very briefly reappeared at Norfolk, Virginia, after which it returned to the Philadelphia Naval Yard. How did Allende know all this? He told Jessup that he was on-board a ship whose crew were monitoring the experiment, the USS Andrew Furuseth. In one of his letters, that detailed his own, claimed sighting of the Eldridge vanishing form view, Allende wrote that he watched “the air all around the ship turn slightly, ever so slightly, darker than all the other air. I saw, after a few minutes, a foggy green mist arise like a cloud. I watched as thereafter the DE 173 became rapidly invisible to human eyes.” Allende’s story was, to be sure, incredible. But, the important thing was: was it true? It sounded like an amazing hoax. But, there was just something about the story which made Jessup suspect this was not a joke at all. The more that Allende related the growing aspects of the tale, the more and more Jessup was reeled in.

(Nick Redfern) Morris Jessup’s books

Allende told Jessup that while the experiment worked – in terms of achieving both teleportation and invisibility – it had terrible, adverse effects upon the crew. Many of them had gone completely and utterly insane and lived out the rest of their lives in asylums for the insane. Some vanished from view and were never seen nor heard from again. Others were fused into the deck of the ship, flesh and metal combined into one. Agonizing deaths were all those poor men had. There is, however, something else that needs to be made clear. Despite the intricacy surrounding the supposed experiment, nothing ever surfaced about the USS Eldridge, and about people turning briefly invisible or vanishing forever , before Allende was on the scene. Yes, retired military people have came forward – post-Allende and post-Jessup – to share what they knew. I only wish, though, we had a fistful of such sources back in, let’s say, only three months or eight months after the alleged experiment supposedly took place. Unfortunately, we don’t. It all surfaces in the 1950s.

The Tunguska event is named for the area in Russia around the Tunguska River where on the morning of June 30, 1908, a high-speed space rock exploded and the air burst created the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history. Archeologists have recently found evidence of a similar air burst created by a similar space rock 3,600 years ago that completely destroyed an ancient Middle Eastern city, demolishing every building and incinerating all of its residents. If that asteroid’s destruction was named for the city it vaporized, it might have been called the Sodom Event. Was the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah really inspired by a space rock?

Trees leveled by the Tunguska explosion.

“Years ago, when archaeologists looked out over excavations of the ruined city, they could see a dark, roughly 5-foot-thick (1.5 m) jumbled layer of charcoal, ash, melted mudbricks and melted pottery. It was obvious that an intense firestorm had destroyed this city long ago. This dark band came to be called the destruction layer.”

Christopher R. Moore, Archaeologist and Special Projects Director at the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program and South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology and co-author of a new study on this Tunguska-like event published in the journal Scientific Reports, explains in The Conversation what archeologists found while excavated at Tall el-Hammam, an archaeological site in the eastern part of the lower Jordan Valley that many believe was once the site of the biblical city of Sodom. That “destruction layer” has baffled archeologists for years until Moore and his team analyzed it with the Online Impact Calculator, which models known impact events and nuclear detonations and facilitates studies of ancient ones. The calculator indicated that Tall el-Hammam was destroyed by a small asteroid similar to the one that destroyed Tunguska in 1908, but much smaller that the rock that caused the dinosaur extinction 65 million ago. What they needed was physical proof.

“The destruction layer also contains tiny diamonoids that, as the name indicates, are as hard as diamonds. Each one is smaller than a flu virus. It appears that wood and plants in the area were instantly turned into this diamond-like material by the fireball’s high pressures and temperatures.”

Along with the diamonoids, the destruction layer contained shocked quartz that only form at 725,000 pounds per square inch of pressure (5 gigapascals), pottery and mudbricks that liquefied at temperatures above 2,700 F (1,500 C), spherules of vaporized iron and sand that melted at about 2,900 F (1,590 C), and tiny melted metallic grains, including iridium with a melting point of 4,435 F (2,466 C), platinum that melts at 3,215 F (1,768 C) and zirconium silicate at 2,800 F (1,540 C). Is that enough proof?

“Together, all this evidence shows that temperatures in the city rose higher than those of volcanoes, warfare and normal city fires. The only natural process left is a cosmic impact.”

An asteroid? Does that mean the sinners are off the hook?

That’s proof of a Tunguska-like event at Tall el-Hammam. However, is it proof of the existence of the destruction of Sodom? Moore thinks witnesses passed the story down orally until it was written in the Hebrew Bible as the devastation of an urban city near the Dead Sea where stones and fire fell from the sky, thick smoke rose from the fires and the city’s inhabitants were wiped out. Moore agrees that’s not definitive proof, but he sees it as a warning that these Tunguska-like events are common and happen frequently – even if the city isn’t wicked.

Moore and his teammates looked back at the fires of Tall el-Hammam and didn’t turn to stone. Lot’s wife must be p*ssed.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

On June 4, 2021, the Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, was renamed Buckley Space Force Base, the home of Space Force’s Space Delta 4 unit. Shortly before that and continuing to the present, a man living close to the base has been photographing UFOs, particularly Tic Tac UFOs, and posting videos and photos on YouTube and Instagram. Are they related? Is anyone else seeing them?

“jason_2_24
9/18/21 10:59am this is a clip of the f16 flying near this ufo i filmed 3 miles away from space force

This is not balloons on a string the string would be moving around all over the place i saw this clearly with my eyes and i have no idea wtf it is. A f16 flew by it as well at 8:35 time stamp start watching and space force doesnt respond to balloons and its not a weather balloon it was big also the string never moves in the wind.” 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CT-fHoZAeoh/

The Daily Sun broke the story of Jason Suraci, a resident of Aurora, Colorado, who has been watching and recording UFOs day and night for at least six months and posting them with time, location and commentary on this like size, proximity to planes and other objects in the videos, and his own speculation on what the UFO might or might not be. In particular, he seems to be aware that many of the UFOs look like balloons – either weather or party – and points out characteristics that shoot these theories down like a deflated Mylar birthday present. He is also aware that these are occurring near Buckley Space Force Base, although not over it as was reported by The Daily Sun.

Buckley Garrison’s Mission and Vision

Our Vision and Mission clarify our path forward and solidify our organizing purpose as a combined, total force Airmen and space professionals (military, civilian, and contractor) in the Buckley Garrison:

Vision: Space-focused warrior Airmen ready to dominate today’s fight and tomorrow’s challenges.

Mission: Deliver unrivaled combat support to our Joint mission partners and Allies, enabling uninterrupted missile warning, intelligence, and cyber operations.

(From the Buckley Space Force Base website)

Are these UFOs aircraft from the Space Force at Buckley Space Force Base? Buckley Field was built in 1938 as a bombing range, was an Army Air Corps training school during World War II, became an inland Naval Air Reserve Station after the war, and became an early participant in space defense in 1969 when the United States Air Force began development on the Defense Support Program ground station there — the Defense Support Program operates the reconnaissance satellites of the Satellite Early Warning System. Buckley is also the home of the Colorado Air National Guard’s 140th Fighter Wing. In 1996, Air Force Space Command activated the 821st Space Group space warning mission and in December 2001, a new Defense Support Program and Space-Based Infrared System ground station was activated.

Emblem of Space Delta 4

If the Buckley Space Force Base is the home of the Space Force Delta 4 Unit and has such a long history of manning space early warning systems, it would make sense that the base would be testing systems to identify, track and respond to UAPs like the Tic Tac UFOs which seem to have snuck up on the USS Nimitz and other naval vessels, outmaneuvered U.S. aircraft and allegedly baffled experts trying to determine if they’re made by humans on Earth (and if so, from what country) or aliens. If that’s the case, then Jason Suraci of Aurora, Colorado, may be witnessing the actual Tic Tacs (if they’re ours), captured Tic Tacs (if they’re from another country), reverse-engineered Tic Tacs (if they’re from aliens) or something else. What does he think?

If your interested in really good affordable paratemporal gen 2 night vision binoculars check out the link below. Most of my videos are shot on paratemporal gen 3 PVS7s its not the same as the binoculars. The binoculars are almost as good as gen 3 PVS7s.

http://paratemporal.com/index6d2.html

While he’s obviously enthused about UFOs and posting the recordings of whatever it is he’s seeing, he also uses the opportunities to plug a line of night vision binoculars so others can help him out. Is he in any danger from the military for posting these videos? If he hasn’t been contacted yet, probably not. Why hasn’t anyone else reported them? Good question. What are these UFOs? If this were an isolated incident, the usual bugs-birds-balloons theories would apply. However, this seems to have been going on for months near a major Space Force and space security base. This is something that requires more investigation.

No wonder he’s looking for more people with night vision binoculars. Be careful out there, Jason.

There was a time when humans had not yet invented numbers but needed ways to count and measure, so they used whatever they had available – rocks, sticks, hands, etc. Numbers and measurement standards made the tasks easier but less fun. There was a time much more recently when humans wondered at an invention called a “calculator,” which took the effort out of standard arithmetic. However, it still needed the operator to do substantial work to be practical. For example, a calculator can help you calculate how much a tube of toothpaste costs per ounce, but it’s no help figuring out how many brushes your family of four will get per tube. For that you need Omni Calculator – a Polish startup which has brought practicality and fun to counting, measuring and figuring with the release of over 2,000 specialty calculators. There’s one that will answer your toothpaste dilemma, another to figure out your bikini size, one to calculate the benefits of switching from driving to work to cycling, a new fun one for calculating in weird units … and at least 1997 more!

“In Omni Calculator, we knock down each and every obstacle that stands between you and an informed decision. We provide the numbers you need, making calculations fast, easy, and fun. A world driven by rational decisions is a better place. It’s a world where we don’t waste resources as much, believe nonsense a bit less, and don’t mistake opinions for facts. It’s the world we want to help building.”

Put down that book — there’s a better way

If the name Omni Calculator sounds familiar, it may be from its UFO Travel Calculator, which estimated those in famous Tic Tac UFOs to weigh more than 47,000 pounds (21,320 kg) with a span of 44.6 ft (13.6 m) and a speed of more than 11,800 mph — allowing one to travel from London to San Francisco (5,351 miles) in 27 minutes. Or more recently when a number of media sites directed Americans trying to figure out their Child Tax Credit to Omni ‘s Child Tax Credit Calculator. Then there’s the Toilet Paper Calculator that everyone should have used to determine exactly how much their family needs instead of creating a massive shortage last year. That’s what the founder of Omni would call a “rational decision.”

In 2011, Mateusz Mucha built a web calculator which could calculate in any direction, without a fixed input or output. He added a mobile app Percentage Calculator, made it available online and it’s been downloaded over 4 million times to date. Deciding that “everyday math problems are a universal struggle,” he started Omni Calculator in 2014. By 2019, it had twenty-four employees and it continues to grow because everyone who uses one of these calculators thinks of another they need – and Omni is ready to build it.

Many of the cool calculators from Omni are of the kind you never thought you needed – and now you can’t do without. A Chilled Drink Calculator to determine how long you need to keep your drink in the fridge to reach its optimal temperature. An Addiction Calculator to figure out how much shorter your life will be if that chilled drink contains booze. A Snowman Calculator to design the perfect Frosty. A Tree Value Calculator to figure out your tree’s net worth. A Crickets Chirping Thermometer to tell the temperature by listening to those annoying bugs. A Dog Size Calculator to estimate the adult size of your puppy. A Plant Spacing Calculator to help plan your garden. And then there’s the latest Weird Units Calculator that makes conversions from standard unit types (meters, kilos, minutes, etc.) to weird ones like football fields, cats, human pregnancies, candy bars and many others.

Can you help me, Omni?

What we need at this point is a calculator to determine what percentage of Omni’s calculators we’ve listed so far. Better yet, how about one that could look at your lifestyle and pick the right calculator for your need. OK, that may be too Big Brother for a company whose mission is to create a world driven by rational decisions. One the company makes is hiring specialists, academics and experienced polymaths from around the world – because every country has different problems.

What’s your problem? Get started finding a solution by visiting Omni Calculators.

Mysterious booms are back in the news in Clarksville, Tennessee, and in Helsinki, Sweden, and after many days with no explanations, residents are demanding answers while their imaginations and fears run wild. Secret weapons? Climate change? Aliens?

“The 911 Dispatch Center received numerous calls around 9:50 pm last night (9/4/21) about a “loud explosion” being heard and several individuals reported that they felt the “ground shake”. The sound was heard across many parts of Montgomery County but there have been no reports of any injuries or property damage. The Clarksville Police Department, Fire Department, Montgomery County Sheriffs Office and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) searched for a couple of hours but were unable to locate the source. Fort Campbell is on a Four Day weekend due to the Labor Day holiday, and does not appear to be conducting any type of training or exercise.”

If it’s not a sonic boom, what is it?

The Clarksville Police Department investigated the reports coming in from many parts of Montgomery County but uncovered nothing. Numerous surveillance cameras picked up the boom, some witnesses claimed to have seen a bright light like a meteor, and one reported an odd smell, possibly from fireworks set of to celebrate the Labor Day holiday – although most of the reports indicated the explosion was louder than fireworks. However, the U.S. Geological Survey didn’t register any earthquakes or seismic activity at the time. There was speculation it could have been trapped gas exploding (although no craters were found) or dried-up water pockets collapsing (although no sinkholes were found). Crossing those off of the list leaves … aliens? It’s been nearly two weeks with no updates or explanations.

Meanwhile, in Helsinki …

“The current opinion is that it was most likely not caused by a meteor, but of course that can’t be ruled out.”

“In all probability, it was not any type of earthquake. We still have a more detailed analysis of that day [to examine], but we looked at it quickly over the weekend and it doesn’t show any clear [seismic activity] at our stations in Helsinki.”

On September 13th, a loud explosion was reported in the Helsinki neighborhoods of Oulunkylä, Kumpula, Käpylä, Arabia, Kulosaari, Metsälä, Meilahti and Kulosaari at around 11:45pm. Initial speculation centered on earthquake, meteor or military-caused sonic boom, but all of those were quickly ruled out by local authorities, astronomers and military personnel. Seismometers picked up nothing, and investigations found no craters, debris or other evidence of conventional explosions. After four days, the Helsinki boom also has no updates or explanations.

If it’s not a meteor, what is it?

These mysterious booms continue to occur worldwide. In a sense, they have become audio UFOs – Unidentified Audio Occurrences. Like UFOs, many van be explained quickly. Like UFOs, some cannot. Like UFOs, they seem to be increasing. Unlike UFOs, governments and militaries don’t seem to be concerned. Perhaps THAT should be a cause of concern for the rest of us. The mysterious booms are probably not alien related. However, unlike UFOs, the sounds are witnessed by many, physically and psychologically disturbing, and dismissed too easily.

Is it time to move the needle on booms from mysterious to sinister? Is it time for a Department of UAOs?

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

That question was put to me not long ago. It’s an interesting question, too. It took me a while to come up with a conclusion, but I finally did. I would say that the alleged (extremely alleged…) “UFO crash” at Aztec, New Mexico in March 1948 fits the bill. Either that, or it’s a complete pile of garbage. And, in-between, there’s some genuinely strange bits along the way. So, let’s begin. The strange story of the alleged UFO crash at Aztec, New Mexico in March 1948 – and the recovery of a number of dead “little men” at the site – is a real hotbed of lies, disinformation, and shady characters. Most of those same characters were best avoided by those with dollars to spare. The tale was made infamous in the pages of Frank Scully’s 1950 blockbuster, Behind the Flying Saucers; it was a book which turned out to be a huge seller. Today, the Aztec affair is seen by some ufologists as Roswell’s “little brother.” As its “skeleton in the cupboard” might be a far more apt description, however. Many researchers of the UFO phenomenon dismiss the Aztec incident as nothing but a hoax; one which was perpetrated by a shady businessman/conman named Silas Newton. His less-than-shining FBI file can be accessed at the FBI’s website, The Vault. When it came to stories of aliens from faraway worlds, making money was always the goal for Newton. And the only goal. Along for the ride with Newton was Leo Gebauer. He was a quasi-scientist and the Igor to Newton’s ego-driven Dr. Frankenstein.

(Nick Redfern) Aztec, New Mexico

There is, though, a very interesting and extremely odd aspect to the Newton/Aztec story. It serves to demonstrate how the UFO phenomenon was becoming the tool of manipulative disinformation specialists in the intelligence community. And not just of the Soviet Union. The United States was getting into the strange game, too. Back in 1998, the late Karl Pflock, ufologist and CIA employee (sometimes at the same time…), was approached by a still-anonymous source who had something very interesting to say about the Aztec caper, and about Newton too. It was a decidedly weird series of revelations that Pflock surely never anticipated receiving. To his dying day, Pflock refused to reveal the name of his informant in the shadows – rumors, however, were that the person may have been a nephew of Silas Newton – but, Pflock did say that all of the lunchtime meetings with his source occurred between July 11 and September 24, 1998 and took place in a restaurant in Bernalillo, New Mexico.

(Nick Redfern) The late Karl Pflock, who was both a Ufologist and an employee of the CIA

So the story goes, Pflock’s informant had in their hands twenty-seven pages taken, or rather torn, from an old and faded, lined journal. No prizes for guessing who that journal had belonged to. That’s right, sly, old Silas Newton. Pflock was told that Newton had kept journals and diaries not just for years, but for decades. They were jammed with entertaining tales of sexual conquests, of Hollywood starlets, of the fleecing of the rich and the gullible, and of wild adventures across the United States. The outcome of all this? Newton decided, around the turn of the 1970s, that it was right about time for him to write-up his version of the Aztec controversy. It would surely have been a definitive page-turner. Death, however, inconveniently intervened in 1972, when Newton passed away in his mid-eighties. What happened to all of those journals is anyone’s guess. As for those few pages that Pflock was allowed to see – and to transcribe word for word – they tell a tale of undeniable weirdness. By his own admittance, and a couple of years after the Aztec story surfaced in Frank Scully’s book, Newton was clandestinely visited by two representatives of “a highly secret U.S. Government entity,” as Pflock carefully and tactfully described it.

(Nick Redfern) Aztec, New Mexico: the site of a crashed UFO? It depends on who you ask

Those same representatives of the government told Newton, in no uncertain terms, that they knew his Aztec story was a complete and bald-faced lie. Utter bullshit, in fact. Incredibly, though, they wanted Newton to keep telling the tale to just about anyone and everyone who would listen. This caused Pflock to ponder on an amazing possibility: “Did the U.S. Government or someone associated with it use Newton to discredit the idea of crashed flying saucers so a real captured saucer or saucers could be more easily kept under wraps?” Far more intriguing, though, and highly relevant to the theme of this book, is the next question that Pflock posed: “Was this actually nothing to do with real saucers but instead some sort of psychological warfare operation [italics mine]?” With the Newton revelations in hand, Pflock, no later than 1999, came to believe that back in the early fifties someone in the government, the intelligence community, or the military of the United States – and maybe even a swirling combination of all three – wanted the Aztec story further circulated. The purpose: as a means to try and convince the Russians that the U.S. military had acquired, or captured, alien technology. When, in reality, it had no such thing in its possession at all. Now, you see why I consider the Aztec affair of March 1948 to have been the most complicated UFO case of all time.

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Several prisoners reported seeing a UFO hovering over the jail where they are currently incarcerated and then a mysterious red rash appeared on their skin. In fact, one of the inmates stated that he never believed in UFOs or aliens until this incident and that he was left “speechless” after the encounter. The sighting occurred at HMP The Verne in Dorset, England.

The inmate wrote a letter to a prison magazine called Inside Times that read in part, “I do not believe in the supernatural or aliens from Mars, but what we recently saw here in this prison was really very strange and still leaves me speechless.”

He went on to explain the encounter, “My landing was out on exercise, all doing our own thing, some were working out and others, like me, were walking around, you get the picture.” “I spotted a hawk up on the battlements, just hovering like it had spotted a mouse or something.” At that point, he claimed, a “very bright light” appeared in the sky. “This object started to come closer and closer until it was actually hovering over our exercise area at about 100 or so foot above us.”

And he wasn’t the only one who witnessed the strange object as he wrote, “We were, by this time, all, including officers, standing with our heads tilted back and looking up at this strange thing.” “Then the object started to shrink and collapse in on itself until it sort of just dissolved into a cloud of mist.”

Incredibly, liquid began coming down from the sky which had very disturbing after-effects, “Then it started raining on us and, the next day, we all came out in a red rash.”

It’s still unclear as to what the mysterious object was but the inmate who wrote the letter stated that it could have possibly been a secret military craft from a base that’s located not too far away. But others have different theories as he noted, “I have heard many different explanations from different men.” “Some say there is a military base on Portland and that this could have been some sort of military ‘Black Project’.” “Others say it was ball lightning. I don’t know what it was except it was very strange.” And of course, the idea of it being extraterrestrial in nature has also been hypothesized.

It would be bad enough spending time behind bars without having to deal with a mysterious rash from an alleged UFO encounter.